Adelaide Lord Mayor Stephen Yarwood racked up a $20,000 mobile internet bill on his iPad during a week-long trip to Taiwan in September, and he’s now fighting Telstra to get out of it, InDaily can exclusively reveal.

Yarwood says he forgot to turn off global roaming data on the iPad when he left Adelaide. The bill will now have to be paid by Town Hall, unless he can convince Telstra to waive it.

“I hope people can have a laugh at my expense but feel sorry for me, and appreciate that I didn’t do it on purpose,” a chastened Lord Mayor told InDaily yesterday.

“I’m personally devastated for a number of reasons. Firstly I’m very tech-savvy, so it really does go to show that mistakes can actually happen to anyone. Secondly I am very conscious of my expenditure.

“It absolutely sucks because I’m a tight arse, I’ve been working so hard to be frugal, I’m digitally literate.”

Yarwood – who described himself as “the cheapest Lord Mayor in the country” during the interview – claimed he hadn’t used his iPad during the trip, except when connected to hotel wifi.

The roaming charges were incurred when the iPad automatically started downloading email using Taiwan’s mobile network – something that could have been avoided if Yarwood had turned off mobile roaming.

He was in Taiwan between 8 and 15 September, according to his official travel itinerary.

Yarwood spent three days of the visit at the Asia Pacific Cities Summit in Kaohsiung, south Taiwan. The rest of the visit was spent touring Taiwan.

Yarwood says he only left the mobile data on during the first day of the trip.

Telstra charges $3 per megabyte for global roaming downloads in Taiwan, according to the telco’s website (although Adelaide City Council is understood to have an organisation-wide contract with Telstra which may affect pricing).

At that price, Yarwood would have needed to have downloaded almost 7 gigabytes of emails.

“I unfortunately turned my iPad onto flight mode, but didn’t turn the 3G off, the data roaming. And then when I got to Taiwan assumed it was off.

“I didn’t actually use my iPad the entire time I was there except when it was connected to a wifi network provided to the hotel.

“What has happened is that the push notifications on my email, and obviously I receive a lot of emails, whilst the iPad was closed and not being used has just racked up this bill.”

InDaily learned of the big bill from a Town Hall source.

Yarwood says he was planning to release a public statement soon, and wasn’t trying to conceal the bill from his electors – who, if he can’t overturn it, will ultimately be footing it.

He said he would fight the bill, because Telstra hadn’t given him any warning – although he travelled frequently with his iPhone, he said.

“It’s inappropriate for me to make a public statement saying Telstra should reduce the bill because that could be seen from me as a political person as an inappropriate statement.

“But certainly you would like to think that Telstra would consider bills by people and make a sensible decision based on the circumstances.

“We do that with our parking fines – I would hope Telstra does it.”